Claudia Singer is Coordinator of Priority Area 10 “Institutional Capacity and Cooperation” of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region in Vienna, addressing institutional capacity-building at local and regional level, participatory governance, cooperation with civil society and local actors, and project funding. She previously worked in the field of European Territorial Cooperation (Interreg and macro-regional strategies) at the Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning. Claudia Singer holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Vienna and is specialised in EU Cohesion Policy, European Structural and Investment Funds, civil society cooperation as well as urban/regional and sustainable development.

Johannes Gabriel is project officer in the INTERREG Danube Programme, responsible for Programme Priority Axis 4 “Well Governed Danube Region”.He studied Administrative Sciences at the University of Potsdam and European Public Administration at the Universities of Applied Sciences Ludwigsburg/Kehl. Johannes works since nine years in European Transnational Cooperation and prior to that in the field of VET and higher education.

Rudolf Schicker was born in Vienna in 1952. After graduating at University of Technology in Vienna, he began his career as a spatial planning expert on regional and national level and became a Secretary General of Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning. In 2001, he entered local politics: he was a Deputy Mayor for Urban Development, Transport and Traffic in the City of Vienna and a Head of the Social-Democratic Group in the Viennese City Council and Regional Legislative Council. In the last few years, he is in charge of the European Strategy for the Danube Region and is currently a Coordinator of the Danube Strategy Point.

RUDOLF SHICKER

CLAUDIA SINGER

JOHANNES GABRIEL

9.10 - 9.30INTRODUCTION

Stefano Palmieri has been president of the ECO Section of the EESC since April 2018. He has been a member of Group II (Workers' Group) of the EESC since 27 October 2009, and between 2013 and 2016 he served as President of the EESC Europe 2020 Steering Committee. He has held several positions at the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) including member of the International and European Department since 2016 and head of the Europe office in Brussels between 2009 and 2010. He has also held several research positions including Coordinator for "Local development and industrial policy" at the Instituto di Ricerche Economiche e Sociali (IRES) and member of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC).

Policy Officer, European Commision, DG Agriculture and Rural Development, Unit F.1 - Conception and Consistency of Rural Development

Architect, urban planner and developer, professor, voting member of the Committee on Architecture at the VI. Section at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Urban Sciences. He has been working in Józsefváros, which is the 8 th  district of Budapest since 1999, and he also constantly teaches and researches at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Within the Department he founded the „Urban Future Laboratory” which focuses on urban planning and design through thechallenges of the cities’ future, and on reflective architecture which interacts with the emerging social needs.

STEFANO PALMIERI

BENOIT ESMANNE

9.30 - 10.30THEMATIC INSIGHTS: KEY SPEAKER LECTURES

GYÖRGY ALFÖLDI

PROJECT BASICSMETHODOLOGY OF PARTICIPATORY UPAAPPLICATION OF PARTICIPATORY UPAPOLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

10.30 - 11.00AGRIGO4CITIESTREASURES

Dr. Pickard is a sociologist who studies the effects urban agriculture practices have on the quality of life of local urban communities, including its impact on solidarity, trust and social inclusion. She focuses on the factors that boost the positive social effect of urban agriculture activities, as well as those factors that hinder UA development. Her fieldwork is carried out mainly in Bulgaria, although she has also studied UA cases in Germany, Spain, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, Italy and Greece.She is an assistant professor at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The presentation will briefly introduce the range of community, institutional, and political types of actors that commonly set the agenda for and shape the development of UA in Europe. UA has a direct bearing on a number of key issues for urban communities (access to land, governance of public space, sustainable urban ecosystems, health, cultural heritage etc.). It is partly because it cuts across such a wide array of policy domains that it is rarely validated as a policy issue in its own right. Therefore,

in the conditions of a commonly missing “top-down” strategy for UA development, it is often the “bottom-up” community or even individuals’ initiative that drives UA activities. To what extent can UA thrive on civil society efforts, what are the crucial cleavage points between the different actors in UA and what are the mechanisms of interaction between civil society and local authorities that have proven most successful across Europe from the point of view of establishing UA as a successful

tool for the improvement of the quality of life of urban communities (including alleviating poverty and social exclusion), are the main questions that the presentation will give an answer to.

DONA PICKARD

THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH URBAN AGRICULTUREAN ANALYSIS OF THE MECHANISMS, OUTCOMES AND CHALLENGES OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE CIVIL SOCIETY AND LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN DEVELOPING UA PRACTICES

12.00 - 13.00GOOD SEEDS:BEST PRACTICES FROM DANUBE

Gardening in the city of Vienna has a hundred years long tradition. The roots reach back to the end of world war one. In order to produce food citizens used the greens for producing their vegetables. Some of them occupied land not only for growing vegetables but for building their dwellings. The city’s government decided not to tear down the buildings, but the  squatters were offered experts support for building detached houses and organize themselves in cooperatives.

Another strand of garden movement was the so-called Schrebergarten-movement, less used real estates were offered for planting vegetables. After world war two again parks were used as gardening area. In the 80s people got the permit to use these small parcels for building their homes. Nobody was planting his one vegetables any more. Nowadays urban gardening is back again as a grass roots movement of citizens, supported by the Local Agenda 21 movement and with the help of the district councils

land is identified and offered for use by loose cooperating groups of inhabitants of the districts.

Rudolf Schicker was born in Vienna in 1952. After graduating at University of Technology in Vienna, he began his career as a spatial planning expert on regional and national level and became a Secretary General of Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning. In 2001, he entered local politics: he was a Deputy Mayor for Urban Development, Transport and Traffic in the City of Vienna and a Head of the Social-Democratic Group in the Viennese City Council and Regional Legislative Council. In the last few years, he is in charge of the European Strategy for the Danube Region and is currently a Coordinator of the Danube Strategy Point.

VIENNA’S CITY GARDENING: HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE AND RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

12.00 - 13.00GOOD SEEDS:BEST PRACTICES FROM DANUBE

RUDOLF SHICKER

As easily accessible and inclusive spaces, Urban Community Gardens have the potential, to be an access points to urban planning and to enable people of all backroungds and ages to engage in discussions and actions around the creation and the sharing of spaces, city development and planning processes.Collective Gardens are or are can be viewed as public spaces. They  work like miniature laboratories for public political behaviour. Communication, sharing, discussing, decision making, tolerating, development of shared

Urban and regional planner / Landscape Gardener / Artist / Film maker Ella von der Haide, works at the University of Kassel as a researcher in the department of Open Space Planning on Urban Gardening and Urban Food Governance. She is an expert on participatory methods, new media and activist research. She has created a documentary film series of Urban Community Gardens in different Cities like Kapstadt, Buenos Aires, Berlin, NY, Detroit around the world (“Another world is plantable! Part 1-5). Ella von der Haide was the researcher of the first survey of Urban Gardens in Munich 2009 and has created the networking homepage.

aesthetic values, creation of formal and informal structures, all happens in the process of place-making in the gardens and are competences to participate in the planning and development of environments.The gardens are themselves part of urban spacial developments, and creating and securing gardens is a process of understanding how governance works, getting to know regulations and learning about different demands on the space and political power and ownership structures in a city.

Urban Community Gardens can be be used as communication tools, to get in contact with inhabitants of an area, and presenting and discussing future ideas, they can e.g. precede urban developments.

URBAN COMMUNITY GARDENS AS INSTRUMENTS OF PARTICIPATORY AND BOTTOM-UP CITY PLANNING

12.00 - 13.00GOOD SEEDS:BEST PRACTICES FROM DANUBE

ELLA VON DER HAIDE

The area is noted as part of Hungar’s National Heritage, its ‘ginger bread’ houses and its strong community attracting regular attention.In 2008 local residents set up what is now known as Transition Wekerle (Átalakuló Wekerle - AW), a citizen-led, climate-conscious initiative now enjoying its 10 th  year of local leadership creating community environmental resilience.Food is vital, approaching it as a community issue resonates culturally, providing a gateway to further action for increasing resilience. Creating

access to good, local, sustainable food can come in many guises.There is an urgency for deeper action and AW is presently working together with Kispest District Council to create a more comprehensive approach to our local food sovereignty, based on the research covered in the ‘HEKK’ - Local Food for Kispest Communities, a local food programme survey undertaken in cooperation with the Védegylet and Péter Kajner of the farmers organisation, the Living Tisza.Can we as a District move towards a systematic relocalisation of our

food sources, deal with food poverty and waste, recreate our supply chain in a way that revitalises our economy and our community too?

Transition trainer and Hungarian HUB member, Transition Wekerle founding member. Over 20 years working as organiser, trainer and capacity builder in Hungarian eco-political movement, presently immersed in resilience-building in own local community, with a focus on the transformative possibilities in reinventing our local food base. Former board member of Hungarian eco-political NGO Védegylet, responsible for the Local Communities in Transition programme, a rewarding participative investigationinto capacities and the culture underpinning community-led transition in Roma, urban sub cultural and eco-village communities. Currently learning permaculture and deepening her experience of cooperatives and urban small-holding.

14.00 - 15.30SPECIAL FOCUS:UPA IN HUNGARY

COMMUNITY STEPSTOWARDS A LOCAL FOOD CULTURE

TRACEY WHEATLEY

LYING IN THE SOUTH OF BUDAPEST, THE 11,000 PEOPLE STRONG WEKERLE ESTATE HAS ITS ROOTS IN THE EARLY 20 TH  CENTURY UTOPIAN EXPERIMENT, THE GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT

Today, the Centre’s movement has become successfully self-organized, and the methodology, legal background and models have been adapted to the Hungarian environment. Through continuous education, consultancy and the creation of a knowledge base, KÉK has supported the development of the urban gardening initiative. Utilizing and analyzing experiences of the past years from the perspective of the society and the livable city, the Program’s current ambitions

are in connection with innovations that enhance and broaden the capacity of gardens in the field of social cohesion, sustainable green community initiatives, services for the local communities and urban climate change adaptation. Could community gardens be the engine of transformation of the society and could they considerably effect the intensification of local communities’ self consciousness? What is the current and what could be the future role of community gardens in urban planning from

the aspect of livable cities? Does the community gardening movement need revival?

head of Contemporary Architecture Center’s (KÉK) Community Gardening Project.Founding member and curator of KÉK, she participates in its activities from the begining of the foundation, in 2005. Educated as a cultural manager, interior designer and financial accountant, she regards social and environmental issues as inherently interrelated, and believes that active local communities may bring about fundamental changes in Hungary, whilst learning about cooperation, solidarity and new forms of trust. With her vital role in adapting the program’s methodology, legal background and models of community gardening to the Hungarian environment in the frame of the community gardens program, she became a significant actor and expert of the Hungarian urban gardening movement, since 2010.

14.00 - 15.30SPECIAL FOCUS:UPA IN HUNGARY

IS URBAN GARDENING FLOWERINGIN HUNGARY?

MONIKA KERTÉSZ

SINCE 2010, KÉK HAS BEEN ENGAGED IN THE NATURALIZATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNITY GARDENS, WHICH ALREADY HAD DECADES OF TRADITION IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAN CONTINENT

BENOIT ESMANNE DG FOR AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

JANI KOZINA RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE SLOVENIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS

MONIKA KERTÉSZ HEAD OF CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE CENTER’S COMMUNITY GARDENING PROJECT REPRESENTATIVE

CLAUDIA SINGER EUSDR PA 10

Side event:Poster session (CANVAS from AgriGo4Cities pilot areas, Danube Transnational Programme Projects)

Project co-founded by European Union funds (ERDF, IPA, ENI).

15.30 - 16.30FERTILE GROUNDS:UPA FOR THE FUTURE